Eryka den Ouden
"It's not for our sake." Eryka den Ouden is a young woman who was born in Europe. However, she travelled around the world with her parents to move people from dangerzones to safezones. After Eryka's parents got killed by Gekijou, she moved back to Europe. Appearance Eryka has long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. She can no longer be seen wearing her regular black vest from when she first joined DEF as it got burned by Roggian. Over two years she changed her attire, her shirt was replaced by a simple white tanktop which she often wears with a new longer sleeveless draped vest (black) over it. Below that she wears denim shorts with black semi-transparant tights and knee-high boots. The boots are also specially made to make sure the legblades can be attached to them. As a female from the Netherlands she is rather long compared to women from other nationalities. Other than that she has an athletic build, developed by her active life of travelling around a lot. After Sparkpulse left DEF and the passing of two years, her hair became a little darker than it used to be. Along with that it can also be seen that she has grown mentally and became more of an adult. Personality Pre-Time Skip Eryka has several sides to her personality. When people first meet her, they will see her as a rather silent person who stays in the background. Eryka rather observes the situation first before drawing attention to herself. After a while when people get to know her, they will see a change. Instead of being silent, Eryka will become more talkactive. She will still observe the situation until she sees fit to add her opinion but does that more often than before. Besides that her comments are more accurate and can become a little harsh sometimes. There is another side to Eryka's personality which she tries not to lose ever since her parents died. This side of her personality originates from the time before her parents died. This side of her personality shows Eryka as a happy young woman who likes to get to know others better. Because of the other sides of her personality people are often surprised by her caring side, warmth and actual jokes. Ofcourse will this side of her personality never rise when she's on the battlefield. A side of her personality that can arise on the battlefield is her fierceness. When Eryka becomes emotionally involved by the death of a comrade or another connection to herself, she'll do anything to reach her goal. Eryka becomes extremely fierce and will even surpass her limits if necessary. That said, she tries to avoid surpassing her limits because of the possible danger it could create for herself and her comrades. The last notable side of her personality is absolute anger and calmth. People often got surprised by this combination. Eryka does not say one single word unless it's harsh, cold and completely accurate. Her actions are direct, strong and calculated. This side rarely comes to the surface, only appearing when something has gone very wrong. Eryka mainly tends to be thoughtful most of the time but she does speak up when necessary. When she's in a group with a lot of silent people, she will be more talkactive than usual because she can't stand the silence. Whether she fills up the silence with serious suggestions/questions or with her cheery/socializing side depends on the situation. Other than that Eryka tends to react rather coldly towards any attempts of guys flirting with her, describing it as 'shallow behaviour'. She values honest conversations. Eryka always tries to act accordingly to the situation, congratulating people when they deserve it or mourn the loss of a friend/comrade/teammember before moving on. Post-Time Skip Eryka's personality changed to a more openly active one on the outside. She would socialize more often with others and she no longer stays silent in conversations. She still thinks everything through and tries to see every single possible result of an action. Eryka is still carefull with what she says and still isn't hasty with her words. Her tactical insight has developed a lot along with that. Even though she isn't sure why, she thinks she changed this way because of the absence of both June and Zack. She isn't overly cheerful but she holds an aura of kindness and even happiness. Along with that she adapted a natural politeness which reminds herself often of how some politicians act. She has adapted to being a commander, including leading missions, evaluating risks and situations, team tactics, taking decisions and be responsible for any kind of result. She is careful with opening up to others. Most people will only know her surface personality and not even have an idea of what lies below the kindness and happiness. Even though she somewhat hates it, she know she has learned to put on a mask for the public. This mask is the main change of Eryka's personality, as she didn't want to lose her original self too much. Her original personality hadn't faded and while she has grown noticeably more mature and became more in control of her emotions, she still has her fierce side when she becomes more and more emotional involved in a situation. Along with that her absolute calmth and anger side is still present as well, though very much more controlled than it used to be. Eryka has become a little more stubborn than she used to be and gained some confidence. Even though she seems to be able to cope better with everything, she is still somewhat saddened by the current situation. (See Pre-Time Skip Personality) History Eryka was born after the Gekijou came in to existence and thus she does not know a world without them. As a child she lived in the Netherlands with her parents where they told her stories about a life before the Gekijou. It didn't take long before Eryka started to long for that life as well and after Eryka was old enough she travelled around the world with her parents. They travelled to places where Gekijou were slowly trapping humans and getting rid of them. Together with her parents she managed to guide several trapped humans to safe zones. During one mission Eryka and her parents managed to save a 15 year old boy from a Gekijou raid on his village. Eryka was 10 at the time and managed to get along well with the boy, who they got to know as Lanuven Evans. They travelled around for several months and Lanuven stayed with them as he had nobody else. Soon enough Lanuven became like a son and brother in the family until the Gekijou intervened again. Lanuven, Eryka and her parents stayed in a house, in Canada, for a while before moving on to their next mission. However, the unexpected happened when a single Gekijou attacked them and burned down the house. During the chaos of the fire Eryka and her parents lost sight of Lanuven. Eventually the Gekijou was forced to flee after Kensei started to arrive at the scene. Lanuven was never found though. On another mission, located in South Africa, Eryka's life changed as her parents got murdered by the Gekijou. They were working on the last stage of the mission, gathering the humans to move them to the escape point, when an old friend of her parents betrayed them. Most of the humans were killed in the chaos when the Gekijou arrived and Eryka's mother was capable of secretly letting Eryka escape while her father distracted the Gekijou. Even though Eryka had been prepared for the death of her parents and she had been well aware of the risks, she was still devastated. Eryka moved back to Europe, taking the few survivors of the mission with her. After dropping them off, Eryka moved back to her home in the Netherlands. When she arrived at her home she found a stranger standing in her livingroom. Soon enough she found out that the stranger was December Endspire, who had learned of what happened in South Africa even though the mission had been a secret. Eryka was intrigued by the appearance and hesitant to believe that he was truly the real December of who she had heard rumors about ever since he appeared. December managed to convince Eryka with few words and granted her with special abilities, stating that 'the dream of life as it used to be is something you can create with us'. December disappeared after that encounter and Eryka has yet to meet him again. Around two days later DEF arrived at her doorstep, inviting Eryka to join them. Eryka decided to join them but remains wary of the organisation and only shares information that is obliged to be shared. During the attack of Veritas on DEF (a while after she joined DEF), Eryka was unsure of what to do. While she and the others of Radiance (Rain, Roggian, Jeffrey and Jonathan) were supposed to not get themselves involved for the sake of the future, she saw no other option when Mark Solis threatened the escape of Sparkpulse with Veritas. After knocking out Mark, who went down on purpose, they managed to convince agents of DEF that they had done nothing to him. After Janus' speech, Eryka visited June's grave to think about what to do. Eryka stayed with DEF for the next two years and became commander of Team Pendulum. Plot (ignore) Powers and Abilities Harmony Eryka's ability is more passive than most abilities. The longer a fight goes on, the more "harmonized" to the battle she will become. And so, she will "speed up" and increase in strength the longer she fights. Depending on how well she can sense the Gekijou, the faster she can adapt to the fight and increase dramatically in strength. In addition to simply that, she can intuitively sense the weak points in Gekijou as she continues to fight. Her power is concentrated in her left leg. ''' Eryka has become capable of shifting the location of the emotional power manifestation within her body. Instead of having it concentrated in simply her left leg, she manages to let it flow freely through her body which allows her to perform '''Breaking Points if she wants. *'Harmonized Inversion: '''More passive like Harmonize, this will affect the opponent instead of Eryka. The opponent will find themselves struggling in battle by the chaotic disruption in their mind and emotions. Eryka is capable of releasing it on command and selecting her targets, mainly opponents, though she notices that it's easier for her to select an entire area if she wishes. **''Second Stage: Strife: Eryka creates a golden orb of energy which will disperse into a mist. Anyone who goes through the mist will find themselves affected. Strife creates a conflict within the mind of the target, causing the target to lose control over themselves or lose sight of their original target. Eryka can also keep the energy in the high density form of the orb and throw it at her opponents. **''Third Stage: Nightmare Distortion: This technique works as an illusion. The control and density of the technique causes that Eryka can create non-abstract manifestations. The Nightmare Distortion fills the area with the energies of Harmonized Inversion and displays the illusion for those who are within the area (the targets). The scene that Eryka creates will be linked to what Eryka or other experience as negative surroundings. The effects of the technique range from the regular HI's disruption to the effects of Strife. Not only that, when the Nightmare Distortion grows 'stronger' the target can also fall into a comatose state for the 'outsiders' (those who are present outside the range of ND and witness) while the target itself will still experience the 'nightmare'-effect in their minds. *'Harmony dispersed:' This is simply harmony though it works in the form of Harmonized Inversion. Eryka will use her harmonize ability to affect and buff her allies in battle. It's still in development and proves to be difficult as it does not choose a specific target yet, rather it still works in an area of affect way. **''Second Stage: Optimizing Dream: ''Just like the Nightmare Distortion this technique works like an illusion and allows Eryka to create non-abstract manifestations. In this case the manifestations are Harmony-natured. The scene that Eryka creates will be linked to what Eryka or other experience as positive surroundings. Where Nightmare Distortion is used to disrupt and break down the target's psyche, the Optimizing Dream is used to calm down and optimize the psyche. The effect of the technique can go as far as optimizing the bodily functions, increasing the speed of the healing rate and increasing several other aspects like speed of thought, strength, precision. This technique is mainly used as a buff for allies during non-battle moments. *'Layers:' A combination technique of Harmonized Inversion and Harmony (the base ability, not Harmony dispersed). Eryka releases the most shallow form of Harmonized Inversion, throwing off the sensing of those around her without her targets noticing anything from it. Together with that Eryka activates harmonize in such a way that she becomes harmonized with the surrounding concealment, making her impossible to sense. She can still be caught by the other original fives senses though (Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, etc.) **''Second Stage: Sleep Walking: This ability is the result of the combination of Harmony Second Stage, Inversion Second Stage and Layers. Eryka creates an undetectable illusion in which she can completely hide herself from all of the senses. One can only realise the active ability when the person 'knows' it's being used. This knowledge can come from errors within the ability because the ability is based on an environment Eryka creates. The environment can be completely fictional but can also be based on existing environments and memories. **''Third Stage: Cloaking:'' This is simply Sleepwalking though with the addition that Eryka can turn others invisible as well if she wishes by combining both Harmonize and Inversion in her target. *'Arrows of Mirrored Harmony: '''This is a combination of spreading Harmonized and Inversed Harmonized energy in a sphere around Eryka. The sphere is divided in two halves of the two energies. The two energies will affect their targets accordingly to what Harmonize and Harmonized Inversion do. The last stage of this ability allows Eryka to compress the energies in two arrows, the arrows are visible and made of pure gold and silver light. When fired, the arrows will hit the target simultanously and basically 'overdose' the target with emotional power, causing them to collapse from the strain. **''Second Stage: Massacre Embodiment: Eryka releases an amplified state of the Arrows of Mirrored Harmony and activates the Massacre Embodiment. She draws the Inversion energy to herself and connects it to her emotional armor, creating a visible armor of a silver aura. The Harmony energy is converted in to a compressed form, creating golden mist on the battleground area of the technique. ***''Reflection Armor:'' The aura-armor surrounding Eryka act as a reflector for attacks. ***''Overdose:'' With the mist Eryka is capable of completely opening her opponents senses yet not increasing their stats, making them vulnerable and increasingly sensitive to disruptive abilities. ***''Twin Embodiment:'' When fighting with a partner Eryka can also choose to connect all of the harmony energy to the emotional armor of her partner. Eryka can limit the effect of the energy to only raising the partner's stats instead of also opening the senses. With the opened senses the partner wouldn't be capable of fighting together with Eryka. She can switch the twin embodiment at any time she likes. ***''Harpe of Harmony:'' Instead of a mist or a Twin Embodiment, the harmony energy is compressed into a sword form, giving Eryka a weapon to attack with. The sword doesn't cut flesh but rather emotional power, like the emotional armor. When it hits the opponent, it once again will cause an overdose by opening the opponent's senses to critical points. **''Third Stage: Shielding Structure: Eryka releases an amplified state of the Arrows of Mirrored Harmony and activates the Shielding Structure. She draws the Harmony energy to herself and connects it to her emotional armor, creating a visible armor of a golden aura. Eryka doesn't really fight in this form, rather she continually gathers energy and supports others with the inversion energy. ***''Reflection Armor: Eryka connects the massive amount of inversion energy to the emotional armors of her allies. This state isn't as powerful as the Massacre Embodiment, but still reflect most of the regular attacks (elemental attacks, physical attacks and weapons). ***''Twin Embodiment:'' With this Eryka focusses the inversion energy on one person, giving them the massacre embodiment. Eryka herself would take the opposing Twin embodiment and work together with her partner. Eryka can switch the twin embodiment at any time she likes. ***''Synchronise:'' Eryka releases thin threads that connect with her allies. With her Harmonizing ability she basically connects with their emotional and mental state, allowing her to become the senses of her allies. Meanwhile Eryka herself will stay back and spread the inversion energy in a harmless silver mist. With this mist Eryka can act as a prophet and 'sense' what happens on the battlefield. Through her connection with her allies, she can aid and warn her allies and guide them in even a blind battle. Note that in this state, Eryka mainly increases her reflex and resourcefulness stats. ***''Bleeding Edge:'' This ability can only be used on the allies who use a weapon. Instead of enhancing and enchanting the emotional armor of an ally, Eryka will now enhance and enchant their weapon with the inversion energy. With this the weapon will cut through emotional armor and cause an emotional disruption when it hits the flesh of the opponent. *'Escalation Barrier:' A rather difficult and dangerous ability that works through a law embedded in Eryka's Harmonize ability. The technique goes as far as to work with the structure of harmony itself. Where there is harmony, there is a vast structure. As long as the structure is set, there cannot be an interruption in the structure that will create randomness. Randomness is a result of chaos and stands for an image that does not show any logical structure. With this ability Eryka can create a barrier of the harmonizing structure to temporarily block the release of any emotional power or kinetic energy. However, because of this barrier, the blocked powers/energies will slowly amplify the longer they are blocked. When Eryka releases the barrier, it will create an outburst of the amplified power/energy, drastically increasing the strength of someone's ability or the destructiveness of a moving object. Several barriers can be stacked upon eachother, allowing the ability to become a kick-start for the activation of Harmonize. It can allow Eryka to throw a dramatic powerful punch by stacking kinetic energy while Harmonize has barely been activated yet. The downside of this ability is that the blocked powers/energies cannot be used while the barrier is active. **''Second Stage: Reflection Barrier:'' A barrier that doubles the effect of an attack or kinetic energy and reflects it back at the source. *'Beacon of Harmony: '''A cursed necklace infused with an specific emotional aspect that runs in Eryka's family. The necklace functions as a radar and beacon. With her sensory capability and Harmonize ability Eryka is capable of tracking the necklace for several kilometers. If the necklace isn't placed on a target but rather in an area, then it will act as a radar, scanning the area for emotional forces like Kensei and Gekijou. The necklace is made of a special material, of which the reason and function is only known to Eryka and her family. **''Second Stage: Bullseye: Eryka places a Harmonic Mark on her target with which she can follow and track the target as well as the weak spot of the target. The mark will stay until it is removed by Eryka or until the target dies. *'Natural Amplifier: '''With this technique Eryka releases both inversed energy and harmony energy to affect natural energies around her. The released energies grasp at neutral energy particles in the surrounding nature and affect them by converting them in positive and negative energy particles. Neutral energy particles can be found in invisible energies like radiant energies, kinetic energies, electric energies and magnetic energies. This cannot affect any energies that have a continuing effect on humans like heat and gravity, nor can it affect the electrical, chemical and kinetic energies of the human body. Much like the Escalation Barrier this ability will simply affect surrounding nature, but in this case not forcing the energies to stop in their respective place and amplify, rather it will cause the energies to be converted and moved away from their original place to be added to the emotional energies of Eryka. On top of this, she can reinforce her body with emotional armor, much like other high level Kensei. Fighting Style With her ability, Eryka is most skilled at close combat and a hand to hand fighting style. Over the years she has learned several martial arts forms and tactical approaches to several battle situations. After studying the human body, the kensei emotional armor and the gekijou body, she developed a technique to take down or even kill any being by hitting five points on the body and/or emotional armor with her ability. The techinque is named '''Breaking Points' though nobody has seen her use it yet. Weapon *'Leg Blades: ' Since her emotional ability is the strongest in her legs, her weapon of choice to be reinforced are blades attached to her legs. They can extend or retract as needed, depending on the amount of emotions sent to them. As a result, they are extremely versatile, although a bit awkward to block with. It is recommended to dodge the attacks entirely. They are attached to the back of her legs, making sweeping kicks from the side the attack of choice. *'Danna's Necklace:' Eryka carries the necklace of her mother with her as it acts as the tool for the technique Beacon of Harmony. The necklace is made from a special material (family secret) and infused with an emotional signature that runs in Eryka's family. Because of this the necklace has several possibilities of function. When not in use, Eryka will simply carry the necklace as the piece of jewellery that it is. Relationships Close friendships *Rain Nocturne :: Eryka has taken a liking towards Rain after the first mission in Team Radiance. Because of Rain's silent and shy nature Eryka somewhat feels like she has to protect Rain. At other times however, Eryka enjoys pulling Rain into new situations. Their friendship ressembles a older sister-younger sister relationship more than a regular friendship. *Roggian & Puko :: Eryka has a difficult friendship with Roggian. At first she wasn't aware of his feelings towards her and treated him like she would treat any friend. During the unregistered mission in South Africa, Eryka was forced to take Roggian down after he lost control and tried to attack Puko. She was succesfull in doing so but feared for the sanity of her friend. They managed to clear things between them and even though Eryka rejected Roggian's love confession, they remain friends. As for Puko, Eryka doesn't know much about the chibi but protected her nontheless. She seems to care for the chibi but she doesn't interact with her much. *Jorgumund :: Eryka met Jor in the gym of DEF where he gave her advice on how to improve her fightingstyle. Ever since that first encounter it seems like Jor keeps an eye on Eryka's progress and well-being. After a little while they became friends and Eryka greatly values Jor's opinion and thoughts on matters. Ever since Sparkpulse left, she didn't have any contact with him and misses him around. *Felix Loman :: The second in command of Team Pendulum. Eryka would trust him with her life during a mission, though she only recently opened up to him completely. She values his friendship and opinion a lot. Regular friendships *Jeffrey Kinkeer :: One of the 5 Radiance members involved with the plans of Sparkpulse. Eryka is still a little on her guard with Jeffrey because he wants to know more in every situation than Eryka would like to share when it comes to herself. She doesn't know the detective that well yet. *Jonathan Shaw :: Also one of the 5 Radiance members involved with the plans of Sparkpulse. Eryka acknowledges Jonathan's leadership, though other than that she can't really say much about the man and how she thinks of him. *Lanuven Evans :: Eryka met Lanuven at the age of ten after her parents saved him from a Gekijou raid on his village. They became good friends but lost eachother after another attack of a Gekijou. Eryka is aware that Lanuven is still alive and currently one of the kensei in DEF. *William Thatcher :: Another member of Team Pendulum, Eryka finds him good company though at times she can get a bit irked by his rash personality. *Alice Rendel :: Eryka can get along nicely with the prophet of her team, even though she doesn't always like the pride-side of the girl, she can talk well enough with her. Other relationships *Janus von Grinstein :: Eryka doesn't trust Janus. She believes that he is at some point involved with her parents' deaths and she is determined to find out in what kind of way. After Sparkpulse called her and four others of Radiance together, she got to know more about his shady actions which only feed her suspicion more and more that he is involved in a negative way. After December called him 'Jon' in the Archaic Vault, Eryka realised that Janus and Jon Heinrich might be the same person and through that connectino involved with her parents who apparantly knew Jon Heinrich. *Mark Solis :: Eryka doesn't know what to think of the Blackout commander yet, she is oddly intrigued by him and because of the developments in Reason 6: First End and Reason 7: The Future she is curious of what kind of person hides behind the neutral mask. *June Iwashina :: June was Eryka's first commander when she was a member of Team Radiance. Eryka respected June a lot and was upset by her death. Trivia *Eryka's Theme *Her parents were Danna den Ouden and Everd den Ouden. *Den Ouden means 'descendant of the old ones'. *She is learning how to play the piano. *Dieci's character Category:Character Category:Female Category:Kensei Category:PC